In his treatise on Shāfiʿī law, Nawawī (d. 676/1277) reaffirms the views of his predecessors Ghazālī andRāfiʿī on translation in early Islamic courts. This excerpt from Nawawī’s treatise focuses on judicial practice more broadly, providing a series of recommendations for the qāḍīfor specific situations, such as when he is appointing a secretary (kātib); the secretary must be Muslim, impartial, acquainted with official reports and records, equipped with clear handwriting, and a qualified translator. In his chapter in Justice and Leadership in Early Islamic Courts, Mahmood Kooria uses the example of Nawawī to show that the shift in the Shāfiʿī stance regarding the status of translation and non-Arabic speakers in judicial proceedings that was inaugurated by Persian Shāfiʿī’s became an accepted view in the influential work of the Damascene Nawawī in the seventh/thirteenth century.
This source is part of the Online Companion to the book Justice and Leadership in Early Islamic Courts, ed. Intisar A. Rabb and Abigail Krasner Balbale(ILSP/HUP 2017)—a collection of sources and other material used in and related to the book.